


my soul to keep

by PitViperOfDoom



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Archivist Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Gen, Ghosts, Identity Issues, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Psychopomps, episode 111, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29981625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitViperOfDoom/pseuds/PitViperOfDoom
Summary: When Tim and Jon finally meet the infamous Gerard Keay, it's not the ghost that has unfinished business.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 23
Kudos: 187





	my soul to keep

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU that I came up early on in my time in the fandom, but I never ended up doing anything with it. It's still near and dear to my heart, weird as it is. And even though it's canon-adjacent, I thought it was far removed enough to count for TMA Fantasy Week.
> 
> Warnings: Death, imprisonment, identity issues, brief discussion of the death of a child.

By the time the car pulled up to the cabin, Tim was sitting on his hands to keep them from shaking. Julia kept sneaking looks at him, and it made every nerve in his body pull tight. There was something hungry in her eyes, that only started to fade after she spent a few good seconds watching him. Like seeing him sit in a puddle of fear scratched whatever was making her itch.

Beside him, Jon sat watching the window dispassionately, eyes half-lidded as if dozing. His hands were folded neatly in his lap, noticeably still. Rather than the victim of a casual kidnapping, he looked like a bored road-tripper watching for the next rest stop. And if Tim didn’t know better, he’d say it was starting to piss them off.

Tim was trying to not to enjoy seeing Trevor Herbert stew in his own frustration. Turned out there were perks to working with someone who approached fear like a particularly tricky foreign language.

As locations went, it was almost cliché. A dirt road, a secluded cabin, far away from anyone who might help and anywhere they could run to. Tim’s mouth was dry as he remembered following Basira through the forest, searching for the spot where Daisy did her killing. And here he was, walking straight into someone’s murder woods again.

He shot another glance at Jon. Jon was out of the car already, stretching his arms behind his back like they’d stopped at a petrol station instead of a serial killer cabin. Julia was at the door, undoing an impressive number of locks. The trunk slammed shut, and Trevor came around the car dragging what was left of Mustermann, like a wolf with a deer carcass.

Jon followed his gaze, taking in the mangled creature and the scowl on Trevor’s face when the old man caught him staring. Jon blinked, matched the scowl for a few seconds, and turned away blank-faced again.

He stayed blank-faced from that point on. When they were pushed inside past clutter and suspicious stains and the lingering smell of blood, when Mustermann’s slowly regenerating body was laid out like a corpse on a slab, when Trevor chose that moment to take out a set of knives and meticulously clean them, Jon took it all in wordlessly. His face remained smooth and blank, broken only by brief flashes of expressions that were there and gone again, putting in appearances for as long as Jon had the patience to maintain them.

Tim ground his teeth. Trevor and Julia seemed like the good ones, for the most part. Monster killers, not serial killers. But that was only helpful if they didn’t think he and Jon were monsters. And as fun as it was to see Jon throw them for a loop, it _was_ in their best interests to convince these people they weren’t a threat.

As surreptitiously as he could, he nudged Jon with a light elbow. Jon glanced at him with a rare blink, and a moment later his body language shifted to match Tim’s. Tension, darting eyes that wouldn’t meet their captors’, hunching slightly to look smaller. He looked… decently scared. Enough to throw off suspicion, judging by the shadow of satisfaction that passed over Julia’s face.

Jon continued to play the part through the waiting, the pair’s statement, and Mustermann’s interrogation. He stayed silent and small, even hiding behind Tim for good measure. Trevor and Julia continued to keep an eye on him, but no more or less than they did Tim.

That changed when they brought out the book.

When Tim was young, he and Danny had an uncle that they hated visiting. It wasn’t that the man was mean or cruel or even boring. But he’d had a dog, a short-haired brown thing of no discernible breed. Tim couldn’t remember its name, only that it had been _big_ , big enough to push Danny around without much trouble. Uncle Geoff always warned them not to run when it came after them, because if you ran then you’d just make it chase you. So they wouldn’t run; they’d hold carefully still, look anywhere but the dog’s eyes (looking a dog in the eye was a _challenge_ ) while the dog stared at them with keen interest, just waiting for the smallest reason to lunge.

Jon looked at the book the same way the dog used to look at Danny.

It wasn’t interest or curiosity. Thank God it wasn’t longing or covetousness.

It was _hatred_.

It was hatred the likes of which Tim had never seen on Jon’s face, the kind that he hadn’t known Jon was even capable of. For a terrifying moment he was sure Jon would lunge like a snapping dog and tear the thing out of Julia’s hands.

But he didn’t. His fingers dug into Tim’s arm until it was painful, and he stared and forgot to blink and breathe again, but he stayed where he was.

Julia took note of his reaction, which wasn’t ideal. “Yeah, I don’t blame you,” was all she said, which was.

It wasn’t a completely unreasonable reaction to a book, considering that book was made of human skin. Not just the binding, either—anthropodermic bibliopegy was a whole thing, but most anthropodermic books didn’t have _pages_ made of skin as well.

Tim tried not to think about it too much when the book was placed in his hands. Their captors—hosts? Were they still prisoners?—were oddly comfortable with leaving them alone with it, but considering that the secluded cabin miles away from civilization was still an ongoing situation, it wasn’t like they had much to worry about.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Jon moved. The book was wrenched from his hands and placed on the floor, where Jon crouched over it and flipped it open to the first page.

Tim blinked, startled. “Um—Julia said it’s the last page…” Jon flipped to the back and, to Tim’s alarm, pulled a knife from his pocket. It was a shitty knife, one of those tiny little Swiss army multi-tools you could buy at a gift shop, but it was still a knife. As Tim watched, he took hold of the page in question and carefully cut it from the binding. “Hey, what are you—!”

Jon pushed the page into his hand without waiting to make sure he was holding it properly. By the time Tim had finished fumbling it, Jon was back on the first page again. With one finger he traced down the writing on the page, and stopped at the bottom line. Tim couldn’t read Sanskrit, but whatever was written there must have been important, because Jon pressed the knife to the page and scored a groove through it that cut through both ink and skin. Flipping to the next page, he repeated the process.

“Um… Jon?” Tim said cautiously. “What… exactly are you doing?”

Jon shook his head and didn’t answer, simply flipped through the pages, reading and crossing out the words, always on the very bottom.

“ _Jon._ ”

“I’m fixing it,” Jon told him. “Do what you need. I won’t stop you. When you’re finished, I’ll take care of the rest.”

He said that— _I won’t stop you_ —but as Tim began to read, he could see Jon look up from his task, watching him all the while. He remembered the dog again, and his uncle’s reminders not to look it in the eye. Focusing on the page itself wasn’t much better, because the passage written on it—thankfully in English—was as grim and unpleasant as he would have expected from a Leitner.

“— _and so Gerard Keay ended_ ,” he finished, and Jon turned a page with a particularly vicious amount of force.

Tim could feel the air in the room turn from stale to _wrong_ when Gerard Keay manifested. Part of him wanted to take a step back, to turn and drop the page and run the other way. But his feet stayed rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the—the _ghost_ , he was looking at a _goddamned ghost_.

“You’re new,” Gerard Keay remarked, looking him up and down. “Are they dead?”

Tim blinked. “Who? The—Trevor and Julia?”

“Yeah. Did you kill them?”

“Yeah, _no_ ,” Tim said with a snort.

“Then _piss off,_ ” Gerard snapped. “I’m not talking.”

Tim raised his shoulders, feeling inordinately defensive. “Hey, you don’t even know what I’m here for.”

“And I don’t care.” He didn’t even sound all that angry, Tim realized. He just sounded tired. “I’m not helping them, and I’m not helping any friends they make. I’m not their bloody Monster Manual. I’m _done_.”

“Wait, just—” Tim hesitated. So far he’d been chased, chewed on, knocked around, dropped, burned, poked, prodded, stabbed, and kidnapped, but it hadn’t occurred to him that meeting with one of their statement celebrities would end in a flat _no_. He hadn’t thought to prepare for that. What could you even offer a ghost?

Jon’s hunched figure drew his eyes again. He’d know, but he wasn’t in a talky mood either.

“Wait.” Abruptly, Gerard was closer, glaring at the page in Tim’s hands. “Is that mine?”

“Uh, yeah.” Tim offered it, only to remember that he was talking to a ghost, and ghosts weren’t known for their ability to hold things.

“Why’d you rip it out?” Gerard asked, not angry so much as faintly confused.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure,” Tim admitted, glancing back to his friend. “Hey, Jon?”

Jon slashed through another page and flipped to the next one. “No.”

“No what?”

“I’m _busy._ ”

“I can see that,” Tim half-lied. “But, uh. I don’t think the Gruesome Twosome are gonna be happy about you defacing their book.”

“Tough.”

“What—” Gerard sounded just as bewildered as he felt, which was weirdly comforting. “What are you doing?”

To Tim’s surprise, Jon flinched. It was more of a twitch, to be fair, but by Jon standards it was a flinch, and in Tim’s experience, Jon didn’t flinch at things.

“Fixing it.”

“Fixing what?” A note of suspicion crept into Gerard’s voice.

“This.” The next page turn nearly tore it. “Don’t worry about it. Keep talking, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Look, not that _I’m_ going to object to someone taking a knife to a Leitner, especially that one,” Gerard said dryly. “I mean—burn the thing if you want. No arguments here. You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Good,” said Jon. “Then don’t worry about it.”

“You said.” Gerard looked to Tim. “He’s the one who tore me out, I take it?”

Tim shrugged. “Honestly, at this point I just sort of go with it.”

“Well, that’s not good enough,” Gerard said flatly. “See, there’s not a single part of my entire _existence_ that didn’t revolve around someone fucking around with that book. So maybe you can understand why I’d be concerned about exactly what you think you’re doing—”

The blade slammed deep into the book, sinking through the rest of the soft, leathery pages. “What was done to you was **monstrous!** ” Jon snarled. “We didn’t stop it, so now I have to fix it! What else do you need to know?”

Tim hadn’t been there, the last time Jon lost his temper. Martin had, deep down in the tunnels where they found Gertrude’s body, dead for a year without a hint of decay. He’d described it later in the statement he gave Tim—“ _Why did_ _n’t we_ _take her?_ ” in a voice that deafened him but didn’t make an echo. A sound that was loud and not a sound at all. Fury, there one moment and gone the next.

Jon blinked down at the small knife embedded in the book, looking nearly as shocked as Gerard did. He glanced at Tim.

“That one’s called anger,” Tim said helpfully.

“Oh.” He turned back to Gerard. “I’m sorry. They sneak up on me when they’re real.”

Gerard hesitated, staring at Jon like he was trying to puzzle him out—Tim could have told him there was no point in trying. Then he switched his attention to Tim, and the page in his hands.

“Who are you?” he asked. “And what do you want from me?”

“We need your help,” Tim replied. “The Unknowing’s coming up, and we know Gertrude was working on a way to stop it, but we don’t know what her plan was.”

“There a reason you can’t just ask her?”

“She’s dead,” Tim said bluntly. “I’m—I’m the new archivist.” The word had never sat right on his tongue, and it felt even worse to say it the more he found out about what his job even was.

“Oh.” Gerard hesitated. He reminded Tim of someone who’d just heard that an elderly family member had passed away. Like he hadn’t thought to expect it, but he wasn’t all that surprised, either. “When?”

“About a year after you.”

“Was it peaceful?”

The memory of three gunshot wounds sprang unbidden to his mind. “Nope.”

A wry smile flickered across Gerard’s face. “Good. She’d have hated dying in a bed.”

“She was in a chair,” Jon offered. He’d gone back to defacing the skin book, and by the looks of it, he was nearly done.

“What about you, then?” Gerard asked sharply. “I take it you’re with the End?” And Tim cringed, because that was the worst thing Gerard could have said, Martin made the same mistake after they all got the Fear Talk and nearly got his head bitten off for it—

“No,” Jon replied calmly. “I am not with the End.”

Gerard’s eyes narrowed. Tim doubted he believed him, which—fair. Tim hadn’t quite believed him either, at first. “Then what are you, and what do you want?”

“Call me Jon.” With one last slash, he shut the back of the book and folded the blade back into the handle. “And we want them gone.”

“Who, the Circus?”

“Yes. And the usurpers. And the rot that sings. And the bottomless pits, the voids that don’t belong, the hunger, the false souls, the emptiness, the thieves, the gluttons, the outsiders. We want them gone.”

Gerard snorted. “I wouldn’t hold my breath. They’ve always been here, and they always will be, as long as there’s fear.”

“We were here first,” said Jon.

For a few seconds, the room was utterly silent.

“Sorry, what?” said Gerard.

“We were here long before they found this.” Jon waved a hand vaguely, as if he could encompass all of everything with one gesture. “We would like to be here after they’re gone.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Gerard gritted out. “What _are_ you?”

“A person, I think. It’s very inconvenient at times.”

“Jon,” Tim sighed.

Jon rose to his feet. “I’m sorry. It’s… hard. I haven’t been a person for very long. There hasn’t been an ‘I’ for very long.”

“I thought you said you grew up,” Tim pointed out.

“Oh. Yes. I was a child. But before that, I was… well. I _wasn’t,_ actually. That’s sort of the point.” Jon looked to Gerard hopefully. “Does that make sense?”

“ _Obviously_ it doesn’t make sense!”

“Fuck,” said Jon, and Tim almost choked on the air he was breathing. “It’s—it’s hard to _explain_.” He looked to Tim again.

“Alright, well,” Tim hesitated. “So, you know the fears, I take it.”

“Yes,” Gerard said tersely.

“And you know how they’ve got all these people and monsters, uh… Christ, what was the word Sasha used, she had a good word for it.”

“Avatars,” said Jon.

“Right, avatars. So, I guess you could think of him as an avatar.” At Jon’s scowl, he went on hastily. “An avatar of something that’s not them. But just as big and unknowable, and he _says_ it’s older, and it’s… on our side?”

“There are no sides,” said Jon. “When you spray for roaches, do you consider the insects a side?”

“No,” said Gerard.

“Me neither, good point,” Tim agreed.

“ _No,_ ” Gerard snapped. “No, no, no, no, fucking _no._ That’s now how it works! That’s not how any of this works!”

“Wait, just—it was weird for me to find out, too—”

“No, _listen to me_ ,” Gerard snarled. “Both of you, whatever you think he is, whatever _you_ think you are, you’re _wrong_. There’s no vast unknowable force for good. There aren’t any entities of—of love or hope or whatever you think. There’s just _fear_.”

“No, _you_ listen,” Tim began, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

“He isn’t wrong,” Jon pointed out. “That’s not what we are.”

“You keep saying ‘we’,” Gerard growled. “Who’s we?”

“Me. Us. It’s the same thing.”

“It’s really not,” Tim muttered.

Jon shook his head, either disagreeing or frustrated or both. “We aren’t the End. We were here _first_. But you’re right, we aren’t good, there’s no such thing. You made it up. We aren’t love or hope—you made those, too. We weren’t made, we just _are_.” He held out the book, and to Tim’s surprise it seemed to sag in his hands. “We hate the End. It _stole_ from us. All of them. You, too. You shouldn’t be here. What was done to you was monstrous. I’m going to fix it.”

Gerard was quiet for a moment. “You’re going to destroy my page?”

“I’m going to release you from it.”

“That’s not a yes. How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I can’t. We can’t.” Jon paused. “You were right, before. No entities of love or hope. Not that we’ve noticed. We’re all you have, I’m afraid. And we’re trying, but it’s hard. They cheat. But if you’d like to think of us that way, then you could think of us as truth.”

“Truth,” Gerard said dubiously.

“We are the truth,” said Jon. “The one you didn’t make up. The only one you can’t deny.”

Tim ran out of patience. “It’s death,” he said. “Fuck’s sake, he’s talking about death.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Jon muttered.

“Fine, yeah. Death, renewal, recycling, the bloody nitrogen cycle. Capital D, Death. Christ. Like talking to a human crossword puzzle.”

“I’m not human.”

“ _No_ ,” Tim gasped.

Jon squinted at him.

“The End _is_ death,” Gerard pointed out.

“The End is fear,” Jon corrected him. “We came first.”

Gerard stared at him, lost.

“We _hate_ the End,” Jon repeated. “It stole from us.”

It was weird, seeing a ghost take a deep breath. But he did it anyway, and the rest of the fight left him. “Fine,” he said quietly. “Fine. If you’re gonna destroy my page and let me die… fine. Not like the rest of it matters. You said you’re trying to stop the Unknowing?”

“Oh thank God. Yes.” Tim ground his teeth. “If possible, I’d like to destroy the whole Circus. So if Gertrude had some kind of secret weapon against them, now’s the time to tell us about it.”

Gerard crossed his arms. “I don’t know about any secret weapons, specifically, but she did have a storage unit. Industrial estate near Hainault, under the name Jan Kelly. She said she hid a key for it somewhere in the Archives. Whatever she had to stop the Unknowing, that’s where it’ll be.”

“Key, key—oh.” Memory struck. “Must be the one under the floorboards. Been wondering what that was for. Anything else?”

“Not that I know of. Gertrude was never one to chat.”

Tim raised an eyebrow at him. “Really. Because we have it on good authority that she was ‘fond’ of you.”

Gerard was silent for a moment. “Didn’t stop her from doing this to me, did it?”

Jon did another full-body twitch.

“You know, you _still_ haven’t answered my question, have you,” Gerard went on, turning back to him. “About what you are.”

“We—”

“I don’t care about ‘we’. I mean you. Singular. Mr. ‘Call me Jon.’ What, is that short for something, or…?”

“The full name is Jonathan Sims.”

“ _The_ full name? Not _your_ full name?”

Jon hesitated, and looked to Tim again. Tim looked away.

He didn’t like this part of it, and he never would. It left a sour taste in his mouth, no matter how much he told himself that it was different, that Jon—that whatever Jon was now, he or it or they hadn’t…

It wasn’t the same. He knew that. But he didn’t have to like it.

“Jonathan Sims died in Bournemouth, in the year 1997,” said Jon. “At the age of eight. The spider meant to swallow him whole, and we plucked him from its jaws.”

Tim could feel Gerard’s eyes on him, checking his reaction. He said nothing.

“We—I asked, first,” Jon went on. “We would have carried him beyond either way. But I asked, if I could…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “He said yes. I grew and, and _lived_ , in his place.”

“Why?” Gerard asked.

“I can do things that we couldn’t. We want to know things, and the Beholding is useful for that.” A venomous look crossed his face, only seconds-long. “And we want the one at its head. He’s avoided us long enough.”

Gerard’s eyebrows rose. “Bouchard?”

“That is his name at the moment, yes.”

The weight of Gerard’s attention fell on Tim again, and his patience—worn thin by the rehash of Jonathan Sims’ story—finally broke. “What?” Tim snapped. “Why do you even need to know all this? It’s not like you have to worry about it.”

“True,” Gerard admitted. “Wanted to make sure you knew, that’s all.”

The ire leaked out of him. “…Oh. I did.”

Gerard nodded. “Good. …Was there anything else you wanted?”

“Not really. Unless you wanted to make a statement.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but a wry smile crossed Gerard’s face, and he shrugged. “Why not. Someone might as well hear it. I’ll try and keep it quick.”

* * *

When all was said and done, Jon took his knife to Gerard’s page and scored out the final line. Gerard didn’t immediately burst into particles, but he did look shocked. “It… doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, with an expression that Tim would take to his grave. He looked even more shocked when Jon reached out and took his hand.

Jon saw the look, as well. “Wouldn’t do for you to get lost again,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Gerard looked over Jon’s shoulder as if silently asking Tim for an explanation. All Tim could do was shrug at him. “Just—”

“Just go with it, right, you said.”

“Yeah. Well.” Tim hesitated. “Thanks, Gerard.”

“Gerry.”

Tim blinked. “What?”

He didn’t know it was possible for a ghost to look embarrassed. “It’s just—I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”

“Oh,” was all Tim could say before both Gerry and Jon vanished before his eyes.

The tears were a surprise, though not an unwelcome one. He’d have to force them down before they got too much. There was time for a good cry later, when they weren’t at the mercy of murderers.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he said to the empty room, and furiously wiped his eyes.

Jon was back within ten minutes. If Tim hadn’t been watching for him, he’d never have noticed; he was alone one moment and Jon was there the next, without even a breath of disturbed air. Jon stooped to retrieve the book, but once he had it in hand, he didn’t rise again. He simply crouched there, holding an empty pile of old skin.

“Jon?” Tim said cautiously.

“What was done to them,” said Jon, “was _monstrous_.”

“I know.”

“I asked him if he thought one of the fears took her in the end,” Jon went on. “If that’s why we couldn’t take her beyond. He didn’t know. But I think I do.” He picked up Gerry’s empty page and slipped it back into its place in the book. “She did that to him. I’m—I’m angry. And I think— _we’re_ angry, too.” He looked to Tim, wide-eyed and lost. “What if we could have taken her? What if we just didn’t?”

Tim shrugged uncomfortably. He was never sure how to handle this stuff—how were you supposed to give advice to the Grim Reaper? “Then you find her, and you take her, I guess.”

“I only hope I can.” Finally, Jon rose to his feet, book in hand.

“What happens with that?”

“We give it back,” Jon replied. “It is theirs, technically.”

“But it’s… it’s not what it used to be, is it?” Tim asked, as Jon lifted his hand to knock at the door and bring the Hunters back. “You took everyone out of it, yeah?”

Jon tried to smile. It was still a skill that he hadn’t quite mastered. “Hopefully, we’ll be long gone before they notice that it's finally started to rot.”


End file.
